Introduction to integrations

If you haven't already checked out our basic study set-up guide, you should do so before exploring this advanced guide. Useberry also has an extensive help centre that provides all of the information required to help you set up your study. We encourage all of our researchers to review the information provided there before setting up their first study.

Creating a target audience on Useberry

Useberry’s participant pool is powered by Prolific’s pool. This means when you Launch a study on Useberry via the participant pool, it’s automatically shared with participants on Prolific.

How to use the participant pool

Once you've registered your Useberry project and want to start collecting data, go to the Share tab on your Project. Next select Create Target Audience under Participant Pool.

After following the instructions on the pop-up window, you can write your study title and description. When writing your study title and description, make sure it’s clear to participants what they’ll need to do in your study! We have useful advice on how to write a good study description here.

Next, select the targeting attributes you’d like to use to specify the sample you need. This means your study is only shared with Prolific participants who match the attributes you’ve selected. You can read more about how we collect this information here.

Importantly, all screening needs to be done with the targeting attributes and you can’t screen participants out of your study. If you need a niche sample that isn’t provided by the targeting attributes then you can try to find these participants with a custom initial screening study.

Top tip: Useberry will automatically review submissions for you with their quality detection algorithm. If you select Replace Participant, Prolific will automatically recruit a new submission for your study.

Useberry’s Help Center provides a more detailed step-by-step guide on how to order participants from the Participant Pool.

Sharing a Useberry link directly on Prolific

This section describes how to recruit participants for a Useberry study directly via Prolific. This can be helpful if you want to get used to Prolific. This guide focuses on Useberry’s paid plans, but Useberry can still be used on Prolific with any plan! Please note with Useberry’s free plan you can get up to 10 responses per month.

Getting consent

It is important to get consent to participate in your research from all of your participants (see here for what to include). Participants who do not consent to take part in your study should be redirected to a separate end-of-survey message, which asks them to return their submission so their study place becomes available again.

If you’re on the Pro or Team plan:

1. Add a Legal Screen Block after your initial Welcome block
2. Upload your consent form information
3. Make sure participants who don’t agree are redirected out of your study

If you’re on the Basic plan

1. Add a Yes / No Block after your initial Welcome block
2. Add your consent form information as the question text and end with asking participants if they consent to take part in your study
3. Make this block required under the Extras heading
4. Enable logic jumps. If the participant selects Yes, direct them to the next block. If they selected No, then direct them to your Thank you Screen. If you’re on the free plan you’ll have to skip this step.

Recording participant IDs

You need to record participant IDs within your survey, so you can match your survey responses to individual Prolific submissions. Ideally, you should ask this question at the beginning of your survey (after consent is given), so you can identify responses even if participants do not reach the end.

Option 1: Automatic recording of Prolific IDs via URL parameters [recommended]

1. Go to Prolific and in the 'Study Link' section of the study creation form insert your study URL into the 'What is the URL of your study?' box, then select the 'I'll use URL parameters' option. This will add the parameters to your study URL. The default name is 'PROLIFIC_PID' so you shouldn't need to change anything here, but parameter names can be changed by selecting 'Configure parameters' if needed. Your 'Study Link' box should now look something like this:
   
   
   
   
2. The participants’ IDs will automatically be recorded by Useberry and show in your results tab:
   
   

Option 2: Adding a question to your study

1. Add a Questions block after your consent information
2. For the question type select ‘Short Text’
3. Below, the Question text box, add ‘What is your Prolific ID?’
4. Make this question mandatory by selecting ‘The question is required’ under Extras
   Your block should now look something like this:
   
   
   
   
5. Go back to Prolific, and in the 'Study Link' section of the study creation form on Prolific insert your study URL into the 'What is the URL of your study?' box, then select the 'I'll add a question in my study' option.

Validating your prescreeners

We recommend that you validate your prescreeners by asking the prescreening question(s) again in your survey. Any validation question(s) should be at the very beginning of your study and must be worded exactly as appears on Prolific. If a participant's response to any of these questions doesn't match their prescreening answer on Prolific, you can message the participants to ask them to return their submissions.

1. On your Intro Screen block, under extras, select ‘Add Screening Questions’
2. Add the prescreening questions you’ve selected exactly as they appear on Prolific
3. You can check the wording by selecting the prescreener on Prolific.

If you’re on the Free or Basic plan, please only rely on Prolific’s prescreening to find the right sample, as you won’t be able to validate your prescreeners.

Redirecting participants back to Prolific upon completion

Once a participant has completed your study they should be redirected back to Prolific to register their completion of your survey. On Useberry, researchers need to show all participants the same Thank You block. We recommend only using one completion code and not using custom completion codes so participants don’t get confused about which code is for them.

Option 1: Automatically redirecting participants via a URL [recommended]

You can redirect participants back to Prolific via the ‘Thank you’ block.

1. On Prolific, select ‘I’ll redirect them using a URL’ in the 'STUDY COMPLETION' section of your study setup
2. Select whether you’d like to manually review the submissions or automatically approve them
3. Copy the URL provided in the box
   You should get something like this:
   
   
4. Go back to Useberry and find your Thank You block
5. Under extras, turn on ‘Survey exit link’ and paste the Prolific URL in
   Once you have completed this step, you should end up with something that looks like this:
   
   

Option 2: Giving participants a completion code to copy and paste

1. On Prolific, select 'I'll give them the Completion Code to copy & paste' in the 'STUDY COMPLETION' section of your study setup
2. Select whether you’d like to manually review the submissions or automatically approve them
3. Copy the completion code that’s in the box
   
   
4. Go back to Useberry and find your Thank You block
5. Enter your message and include the completion code and instructions to return to Prolific
   Once you have completed this step you should end up with something that looks like this:
   
   

Previewing and publishing your study

After completion of the first 4 steps, you next need to add in your main study blocks. To preview your study on Useberry and make sure participants go through each block in the order you want, click Preview in the top right:

Once you’re happy with your Useberry study, you can click Start Testing. This will take you to the share tab on Useberry. Here, select Grab your link and you’ll see this screen appear:

Make sure your link is active before you click publish!

Useberry integration FAQs

What should I do if the quality detection algorithm has said a submission is potentially low-quality?

If you’ve posted your study directly on Prolific, please only use our guidance to review submissions. If a session is marked as potentially low-quality, please review this submission in more detail but remember only submissions with a completion time three standard deviations below the mean should be rejected for being too fast!

If you have any concerns about a submission, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.

Why are participants saying they’re unable to access my study?

This is likely because your Useberry link is currently not active. You can go back to Useberry and under the Share tab select, Grab your link. Then toggle the link to be active:

For new participants to your study, they should now be able to access your study. For the participants that have already tried to access your study, please send them a message with your Useberry URL.

If participants are still not able to access your study, please get in touch by clicking the link below.

Need further help?
Click here to contact us